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A faceted aluminum hummingbird, frozen mid-hover over the tiny flower it depends on.
A faceted aluminum hummingbird, frozen mid-hover over the tiny flower it depends on.
The Weight of Levity is a seven-foot sculptural installation featuring a five-foot geometric hummingbird suspended in mid-air, its beak pointed down toward a small, delicate flower resting on the ground.
The flower beneath it is soft Tyvek, modeled on Ipomopsis aggregata (Scarlet Gilia), a wildflower native to the western US commonly visited by hummingbirds. A steel rod hidden in the beak gives the bird the uncanny appearance of hovering improbably under its own power.
The piece earns its keep through the double-take. Visitors approach a massive metallic bird and only then discover the tiny flower it's drinking from.
There's a quieter layer too. The piece plays with the ecological concept of "plant blindness" — the human tendency to care about charismatic animals while overlooking the plant life on which those animals depend. Everything spectacular here depends on the thing you almost didn't notice.
The Weight of Levity will debut at SOAK 2026, the Pacific Northwest's regional Burning Man event, where the theme was Not to Scale.
Hummingbird Model
Hummingbird Model
The bird is welded aluminum sheet: angular, faceted, and glinting.
Lighting
Lighting
The flower glows from within, lit by internal LEDs, while Lux Capacitor solar floodlights wash the bird in light from below.
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